News :: Miscellaneous

Cook County's Sea of Corruption

Author

DB

Date Created

24 Jan 2004

Date Edited

24 Jan 2004 06:21:41 PM

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On October 17, 2003, six Cook County employees died during a fire that erupted at ceiling level on the 12th-floor of the County Administration Building at 69 E. Washington in Chicago's Loop. The six workers, including well-known Chicago feminist author Felice Lichaw, died when they were trapped in a smoke-filled stairwell by doors that locked behind them.

Testifying before an independent committee appointed to investigate the fire, an official who lost three employees in the fire compared the deaths to the deaths of the Willis children in 1994, and blamed the fire on "an ocean of political corruption" that allowed an unqualified firm to manage the building. Full Story